Building What Lasts: Brad Feld on Trust, Mentorship, and Long-Term Thinking
Guy Kawasaki's Remarkable People
Guy Kawasaki
4.5 • 679 Ratings
🗓️ 4 February 2026
⏱️ 62 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What does it really mean to give without keeping score? Brad Feld has built a career by answering that question differently than almost anyone in venture capital.
In this episode of Remarkable People, Guy Kawasaki sits down with Brad to unpack the philosophy behind his new book Give First, a mindset that has shaped startup communities, mentorship culture, and long-term trust across the tech world. Brad explains why generosity isn’t naïve, why mentorship works best when it becomes a peer relationship, and how founders can build enduring success without transactional thinking.
This conversation challenges many of Silicon Valley’s most sacred assumptions—and replaces them with something more human.
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Guy Kawasaki is on a mission to make you remarkable. His Remarkable People podcast features interviews with remarkable people such as Jane Goodall, Marc Benioff, Woz, Kristi Yamaguchi, and Bob Cialdini. Every episode will make you more remarkable.
With his decades of experience in Silicon Valley as a Venture Capitalist and advisor to the top entrepreneurs in the world, Guy’s questions come from a place of curiosity and passion for technology, start-ups, entrepreneurship, and marketing. If you love society and culture, documentaries, and business podcasts, take a second to follow Remarkable People.
Listeners of the Remarkable People podcast will learn from some of the most successful people in the world with practical tips and inspiring stories that will help you be more remarkable.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, everyone. It's Guy Kawasaki. I believe we are in troubling and dangerous times. |
| 0:08.2 | One of the things that's happening is that privacy is eroding. And when privacy erodes, so does |
| 0:15.0 | democracy. So Maddoz and Nizmer and I, we just finished the book. It's called Everybody Has Something to Hide. |
| 0:24.0 | This is a jargon-free book. It is for everybody to learn why and how they should use signal. |
| 0:32.0 | They should use signal to ensure their privacy, safety, and well-being. |
| 0:36.2 | It comes out on January 28th for five days. |
| 0:40.1 | It'll be free. And then it'll go to $4.4. I hope you see what we did there. The forward is from |
| 0:47.9 | Congressman Rokana because he believes, like we do, that democracy is extremely important. And Signal is one of the tools that |
| 0:58.7 | can help us preserve democracy. So remember the name. Everybody has something to hide. It's by |
| 1:06.2 | Guy Kawasaki and Madison Nyzmer. So the foundational difference between the two is that pay it forward has this transactional |
| 1:14.9 | component. |
| 1:15.6 | I'm doing this out of obligation. |
| 1:17.5 | I'm doing this because somebody once did it for me. |
| 1:20.4 | Give first is just a philosophy. |
| 1:23.0 | It's a way of being. |
| 1:24.5 | It's a way that you approach things. |
| 1:26.3 | And it's important to recognize the difference I like |
| 1:29.3 | to say in this concept between religion and philosophy. Give first is a philosophy. Religions are, |
| 1:37.7 | if you do this and you do all these good things, theoretically, some good thing will happen to you. |
| 1:48.0 | Hello, everybody. It's Guy Kawasaki. This is the Remarkable People podcast, and we have found |
| 1:54.6 | another remarkable person to inspire and to inform you. Arguably, he is the second most famous person from Arkansas in entrepreneurship. |
| 2:06.3 | There's another guy who started it with a few stores, but anyway, I would say, however, |
... |
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